Everything in its Place
by Angela Webber, Sydney Morning Herald, Domain, May 20, 1999

Look, it's about feng shui - the art of living in harmony with your environment. It's recently started to boom in Australia, but is it just a flaky fad or is there really something to it?

Feng shui has been practised in China for more than 4,000 years - which you'd have to say is a pretty long run for any fad. It was first used by the emperors, who employed practitioners they called Masters of Di Li. Their brief was to locate cities and towns so that they prospered.

Today in Australia, feng shui is being used in business environments as well as in the home. Feng shui audits on properties are becoming more commonplace in the real estate world. Given the frantic pace of urban life, the idea of creating a harmonious sanctuary at home doesn't seem flaky at all. Time to dig a little deeper.

Master Joseph Yu has just completed his third feng shui lecture tour in Australia. He's a graduate in physics and mathematics and has studied feng shui in Hong Kong. Now based in Canada, he's been concerned about the way "pop" feng shui has been taught in the West, believing it dwells too much on superstition.

Students at his Sydney seminar are a mixture of newcomers and experienced practitioners. It doesn't take long for the complexity of the subject to be revealed, and by late afternoon this student still doesn't have a firm grip on her bagua and ming gua, although she's committed to giving her "red bird" (front yard) and "black turtle" (backyard) a much-needed overhaul.

Why would Master Yu, with his scientific background, choose to become involved with this esoteric ancient art?

"In the beginning I saw a lot of malpractice and people getting very superstitious," he explains. "This is not the right thing to do. But unless I knew what feng shui was exactly, I couldn't find fault. I studied and studied and found it made a lot of sense. I changed my attitude from sceptical to supportive."

Does he think of it as a science? "We don't claim feng shui is a science. We try to be parallel to scientific methods. When feng shui is practised in certain houses the effects are phenomenal."

Sydney architect Howard Choy has been applying classical feng shui principles in his practice for more than two decades. Once Choy practised feng shui only for Chinese clients, but now 80 per cent of his clients are Westerners. Currently he's involved in the upgrade of Chinatown as part of the Olympic 2000 capital works program - the first time, Choy believes, that feng shui principles have been used in an Australian urban renewal project.

"Feng shui is defined through energy," he says. "It's the flow and containment of energy in our environment."

According to quantum physics, everything is made up of energy. This same principle lies at the core of feng shui.

"Original matter has energy - it affects you and you affect it," Choy says. "The Chinese think nature is magical. It becomes alive. We look at a cloud and see a tiger. We react to it. We give a quality to a building - maybe fire or earth based on the five elements." He likens a house to a human being - a friend. When reviewing a home for a feng shui consultation, his first consideration is always: "Where is the heart in this place? Can people get together here and talk?"

In feng shui terms, a house also has a mouth, the door. This is considered important as it is where the energy, or chi, enters.

"It is necessary to assemble the chi in order to assemble affection. Make the house feel like you love it, then the house will love you."

But there's bad news for people who live with clutter. It's a big no-no because it "stagnates the chi". Choy believes "the action of throwing out unwanted things means you clear your mind. Everything becomes possible."

After examining the orientation of a site and its chi patterns, a feng shui consultant will look at its yin and yang qualities. The birth dates of the occupants are used to calculate the ming gua which is needed to find their appropriate element; fire, water, earth, wind etc. Then, if the house isn't working from a feng shui perspective, the consultant will look at the furniture arrangement and find colours and shapes to give support. The aim is to arrive at a balanced and harmonious solution.

"Colour is very important. It has two aspects - psychological and symbolic. How a house smells is also important," Choy explains. "We work on different levels, between the mundane and the spiritual."

As well as doing "reactive" consultations, Choy designs and builds buildings based on feng shui principles. He won't be drawn into discussion about the growing number of new age feng shui consultants, except to say that he thinks some have "idealistic, romantic concepts which they don't know how to tie down to earth.

"My teacher, Master Ren, used to say 'the further you fly the kite, the tighter you have to hold onto the string’.”

Choy was horn in China and migrated to Australia as a child. After graduating in architecture from the University of New South Wales in 1974, he moved to Hong Kong.

"My first project there was a hospital. A few weeks before construction was due to start the project was stopped because of bad feng shui."

This prompted Choy to commence studying feng shui with Master Ren Zhi-Liang. Later he continued his studies with Professor Wang Yu-de in mainland China.

INSPIRED after reading a few books on feng shui, Siimon Reynolds, managing director of Siimon Reynolds Consulting, decided to incorporate feng shui principles into his home and work environment.

"I realised that a lot of bright, successful business people in Asia used it," says Reynolds. "The more I investigated, the more I realised buildings either had good luck or bad luck."

After a three-year search, Reynolds found his current apartment in Double Bay. The site has good feng shui elements; it's near water, with a hill behind and a park nearby. The apartment is also a pure rectangle which is considered auspicious.

Iain Halliday, from Burley Katon Halliday, arrived at an initial design for the apartment's renovation. Reynolds then approached Howard Choy for a feng shui consultation and Choy felt the plans had a few problems.

"Siimon decided to be quite strict about the feng shui," explains Halliday, who had already worked in Hong Kong where, in his experience, feng shui problems were usually solved with mirrors.

In the Reynolds apartment the kitchen and bathroom were located in the centre of the unit which in feng shui terms was considered inauspicious. The entrance was narrow, which reduced the flow of chi, and in the bedrooms beds were placed under windows which was considered undesirable.

Bringing these matters to the attention of a designer could have been a delicate matter. Choy remembers: "I said 'I'm not criticising your work as a designer, I'm just pointing out the feng shui elements'. The aim is not to curtail a designer's input, but to deepen it."

"We have a wide range of clients with a range of needs; feng shui is just one of them," Halliday says. "We can work with lots of things. It's another part of the brief."

Another solution, incorporating feng shui principles, was reached.

"The end result is something we're all happy with," Halliday says. "From our point of view we're pleased we could achieve it in a language we were happy with too. It's a restful apartment."

However, Halliday feels if a person is interested in using feng shui, the feng shui consultant must be involved at the beginning of the process. "Feng shui's principles of restfulness and wellbeing are admirable and we'd like to think there's an element of it in our work already," he says. Reynolds says: "When you walk into the apartment you feel comfortable ... A lot of feng shui is just good design. If you feel comfortable and calm it affects your thinking."

After using Choy as a feng shui consultant on the two campuses of her college, Prue Logan Leith, director of the School of Colour and Design and Colour Communicators, felt it was “essential” to use his services at her new Lindfield home. The house had plenty of character, but it had been empty for 18 months.

"We knew it had enormous potential and a good feeling," says Logan Leith. "We had chosen our bedroom to be a room near the swimming pool looking out onto the garden."

Choy reviewed this idea: "You are active and energetic people. It's not necessary to be placed on the yang side. What if we move you to the yin side and create a parent's retreat."

They did and Logan Leith is delighted with the results which she describes as "very peaceful, relaxed and calm". Because she is a colour specialist, Choy didn't offer any suggestions for a colour scheme.

"Howard talked to me in a symbolic way about the environment, then I interpreted it and created the mood I wanted to evoke," she says, adding that she chose to paint the bedroom walls in three tones of a cool, placid blue in horizontal lines to give a feeling of balance.

In the heart of the home, an open-plan contemporary country kitchen, the mood is dramatically different.

"We wanted the heart of the house to he a high-activity, high-energy space so we selected colour hits in bright red, navy and strong teal." Logan Leith believes using feng shui has had a huge impact on their lives. But the reaction of friends has varied.

"Creative people involved in the design world were quite sympathetic," she says, "but the reaction from those in the business world was cynical. But they do respond to it and say 'wow, this feels good'."